Twigs Are Falling Off Of Our Nest!

Two weeks ago I was unsuspectingly playing the good housewife when all of a sudden I felt like a locomotive was passing through my living room at full speed of a modern train. Like in Japan. Whaaa? The washing machine gone mad! It was growling and whining and screeching and banging and biting.

I decided to stick with daytime laundries for the time being to avoid driving neighbours mad. They might not appreciate living next door to Grand Central. But then the washer decided to add some white lint all over the load. And then it stopped wringing the clothes - so now they come out with water dripping off of them. Just asking to be hanged out the window Italian style. Only I'm not in Italy (not even Italian!) and it's below zero out there.

Hmmm. Can you stick something THAT wet into a dryer? Since it's a stupid 2-in-1 unit and we'll have to throw away the whole thing anyway, I decided what the hell. I loaded everything in the dryer and turned on TV.

Weirdly enough, 2 hours later I could still hear the dryer humming merrily away. Whaaaa?! The dryer just got stuck mid-cycle, happily bringing hot air but not bothering to spin. So a couple of t-shirts on top of the pile were warm, but the rest was still soaking wet and ice-cold. At midnight. After over 2 hours of humming (very helpful)! I guess Hydro will be merrily humming, too when they will be issuing my next bill...

Unemployed and happy about it

You know what? Being unemployed is really a godsend. 

That is, of course, if you hated your last job, if you are receiving well-deserved employment insurance, and if you have another income to rely on.

Everyone is saying: enjoy it while it lasts. How often does a vacation like this happen? Paid for and effortless and long?

So I decided: making breakfasts each morning was all nice and fun, but didn't truly make me feel free and liberated. I decided to start doing all those things I could never find the time for.

I started today.

I sat on a boulder at the shoreline, with the Lake Ontario waves swishing at my feet. There was no wind. No people. No noise other than seagulls chasing each other.

Breakfast Recipe - Breakfast Nests

I am here. Kinda. Life has been busy over the past week, lots of activities, lots of new experiences... Snowboarding for the first time in my life? Check. Dinner in a rotating restaurant? Check. (I'm glad the rotation was fairly slow...) Experiencing the 4D theatre (motion, water spray, wind blowing). Check.

Throughout this week I cooked some of the breakfasts I shared earlier - crepes, frittata, rice pudding.

Today, I finally decided to make something new - and it was oh-sum! Awesome, that is, pardon my Russian accent :)

Please note: you need a muffin baking form for this one and a rolling pin (wow, I just learned a new word... rolling pin!)

Ingredients:

toast bread

carrots

zucchini

deli meat

cheese

oil

salt

 

Recipe:

Unicycle or Weird Spring Sightings

I am hyperactive these days. Waking up real early, making exquisite breakfasts, networking, interviewing, taking driving lessons. I am not working - and I actually got myself a monthly metro pass - that's how much I move around. 

So today I was in West Bloor Village, paying at the cash of my favourite Chapters store (very cool building, if you haven't been there - it used to be a theatre... they still have a stage and little folding chairs on the walls) - when I saw a nonchalant unicyclist driving down the road. Right on Bloor.

This unicyclist got me curious to the point that I dove towards my laptop the moment I came home and discovered that in the Canadian Highway Traffic Act, a bicycle is defined as "a device having any number of wheels upon which a person sits astride and which is propelled solely by human muscular power through the use of pedals". So there you go, unicycle is just as legal on the road as any other.

A few clicks later, I discovered that unicycles are extremely popular. There are quite a few variations, like a giraffe unicycle and multi-wheel unicycle.

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 14. Breakfast Cheesecake

That's it - I did it! Two weeks of waking up real early with the sole purpose of making a breakfast for my hubby, and a different breakfast each day at that! I survived through all those days when I really wanted to just bury myself in the pillows and blankets and hibernate for a day or two.

No, I am not going to stop making breakfasts. But now I will allow myself to skip a breakfast here and there. And repeat the recipes. And make some really easy ones - like toasts with yogurt :)

Anyway, here's breakfast #14 which turned out to be more like a dessert. Like a cheesecake. My hubby felt this one was the best out of all 14.

You're supposed to bake it in the evening - and serve cold in the morning. 

Ingredients (for 2-4 servings):

Filling:

  eggs - 4

  baking cheese (minimum 10% fat) - 500 g.

  sugar - 1 cup

Crust:

  sugar - 1 tbsp

  hot chocolate powder - 2 tbsp

  flour - 3/4 cup

  baking soda - 1/2 tsp

  cold butter - 50 g.

Recipe:

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 13. Simplest French Toast

You know what? I think I got me a winner: this recipe is really simple, tasty - and fast. Even if right now speed isn't my topmost priority, it sure is for most people's breakfasts.

There are quite a few French Toast recipes. I remember an exceptionally complicated one I attempted a year or so ago - there were numerous spices like nutmeg and cinnamon involved, and it had to be baguette, and the baguette had to be left soaking in your fridge overnight and baked in the oven in the morning.

And you know what? After all these efforts, it turned out the proportions in the recipe were off. The baguette stubbornly remained half-dry by the time we woke up, and it didn't taste all that great anyway. So complex recipes are not always the best ones to follow.

Today's simple french toast is perfect illustration of that.

Ingredients (for 2 people):

bread - 4 pieces

milk - 2/3 cup

eggs - 4

sugar - 2 tbsp

liquid vanilla - 1 tsp

salt - 1/4 tsp

butter (for cooking)

icing sugar (for decoration)

berries, yogurt, fruits, honey, maple syrup, ice-cream - whatever you want

Recipe:

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 12. Crepes (Blinis)

Seriously. I know I mentioned this quite a few times earlier this week: it's maslennitsa. And today is the last day! So we had blinis (crepes) for breakfast. Nice and thin and lacy. And - most importantly - tasty.

There are millions of recipes, of course - I chose the one to my liking and slightly modified it. 

For about a dozen blinis:

Ingredients:

eggs - 2

salt - a pinch

sugar - 1 tbsp

boiling water - 1 cup

milk - 1 1/4 cups

sour cream - 1 tbsp

flour - 1 1/4 cup

baking powder - 1/2 tbsp

oil

Recipe:

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 11. Kaiserschmarrn with Dried Apricots

Kaiser-what? I looked it up. Wikipedia insists this really is a dessert. A pancake, for that matter, and a thick one at that. Well, I had this recipe saved as a breakfast one - albeit sweet, indeed. And, as I mentioned a few days earlier, it's MASLENNITSA this week, so pancakes just fit. Just if you're curious, "kaiser" means "emperor" (I sense Cesar is from the same family... kaiser, cesar... see?) and "schmarrn" is "mishmash" in Austrian German. 

I got bored with wikipedia so can't tell you what emperor has to do with this breakfast dessert. Or dessert breakfast. But mishmash it is - for this 'pancake' gets torn into pieces.

Don't try this on a regular morning. And don't try this while everyone's sleeping - unless you wanna wake them up: you'll be operating a mixer. But it really is a simple recipe.

Ingredients:

flour - 100 g

rum - 1 tsp

eggs - 2

sugar - 2 tsp

milk - 100 ml (cold)

salt (just a pinch)

butter (for frying)

icing sugar (for decoration)

Recipe:

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 10. Grilled Sandwich

Uh-oh. I don't have eggs. I have just enough milk for 2 cups of coffee. I ran out of fresh fruits. That's what happens when you go to a late-night zumba class and forget all about groceries. So what on earth am I supposed to cook for breakafst with no eggs and milk?!

It turns out there is a solution - if you have an indoor grill. I do. So I made a grilled sandwich - I used to love them when I lived in Israel. Back then, I had a grilled sandwich machine which was impossible to clean for the fear of being electrocuted. Now I have an indoor grill machine with removable and dishwashable plates. And there are plates for Belgian waffles, too. But that's not the point - today I'm making grilled sandwich!

Ingredients:

bread (toastable)

deli meat

cheese

ketchup

butter

tomato

Recipe is simple:

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 9. Poached Eggs Sandwich

This morning I slept right through all of my alarms. I still managed to get out of bed before my hubby got out of shower, but I definitely had far less time than I needed for the planned since yesterday breakfast. 

Change of plans on the fly!

Flipping through the breakfast recipes saved on my laptop, mentally flipping through my fridge contents, flipping through a wonderful book I received a few years ago called "out to brunch", I finally got me a winner: poached eggs sandwich.

Now, if this is your first time poaching an egg, perhaps it's not gonna be a life-saver breakfast put together in 8 minutes. Just a warning. Well, not a warning... a watch-out.

Anyhow, the recipe is really for Eggs Benedict, but that definitely is not a quick breakfast solution as the sauce takes forever to make. I had to be inventive with the fridge contents and tight deadline (oh my, I talk like a project manager again).

Ingredients for 1 serving:

bread - 1 toastable piece (I really prefer whole wheat)

egg - 1

deli meat - 1 piece (I used prosciutto cotto; you can even use smoked salmon - actually, that'd be even better...)

spread or sauce (now, as I said it's supposed to be a sauce made all by yourself for eggs benedict. But since these were poached eggs sandwiches I was making, I grabbed a spinach spread from Fountain Sante, I just love it. Salty and rich - that's what you're looking for. And yes, you can make the poached egg sandwich even without sauce altogether - the runny yolks will be enough)

vinegar

salt

The recipe is quite simple:

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 8. Cottage Cheese with Dried Fruits

I had way too much wine and fried calamari for dinner last night to even consider frying or baking anything today for breakfast. Regardless, to maintain a balanced diet, you need to get your dairy at least every now and then.

So today' breakfast was simplicity itself: cottage cheese with dried fruits.

Ingredients:

cottage cheese

dried cranberries (sweet ones)

dried pitted prunes

dried apricots

fresh blueberries

jam (if you wish)

nuts

Really, I don't think I need to write a recipe, but here it is, just in case.

2 Weeks of Breakfast: Day 7. Frittata with Salmon and Green Beans

This morning - frittata! Now, if you think that frittata is just a fancy name for an omelette, think again: while omelettes are prepared by simple mixing of egg yolks and whites in a bowl, for frittata you need to beat the eggs until you get them foamy, with lots of bubbles - for lots of texture.

And no, I didn't know this until today :)

Ingredients (this will be enough to feed 4-6 people):

eggs - 6

green beans - 100 g

canned salmon - 80 g

basil - 2 sprigs (or 1/4 tsp of dried one)

olive oil

salt

pepper

So, to make a frittata, you need: